A few days ago, an announcement of the Left-wing local legislator’s visit to an apartment complex in suburban Ernakulam in the WhatsApp group of the owners’ association drew an impulsive “Swamiye Saranam Ayyappa” from a middle-aged flat owner, his name giving away his upper caste identity.
What would have passed off as an innocuous chant under ordinary circumstances was unmistakable in its loaded political messaging, something the incantation had come to acquire ever since protests by a clutch of hardline Hindu outfits under the banner of Sabarimala Karma Samithi erupted against last year’s apex court verdict favouring entry of women of all age groups to the Sabarimala temple.
Its undertone gauged well, another member of the group – an entrepreneur in his 30s and an Ayyappa devotee from the Ezhava community, one of the OBCs which is a major constituency of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) – repeated the chant, asserting that he would like to interact with the legislator. An uneasy calm prevailed in the group thereafter. But its members were at daggers drawn offline in a hostile display of cultural tribalism by two sharply-divided sets of people. While Kerala was no exception to the subterranean interplay of caste and communal equations with electoral politics, a sharp polarisation down to the family level in the name of a perceived threat to ‘faith’ has now come to dictate what’s being billed as a political election.
The irony is hard to miss. The electoral battle has been taken to the personal space like never before. In the over a dozen interactions The Hindu had with voters from various age groups, vocations, and castes, what emerged was a picture of a rise of revivalism, a lurking fear – especially among the upper caste, financially sound middle-aged voters – of impending social change and a general inability among large sections to have a dialogue across communal lines.
Out in the open
“What had been dormant has now come out in the open,” says critic Sunil P. Elayidom, who thinks that for all the progressiveness in Kerala’s public sphere, family as an institution has not undergone any modernisation. “Its value systems are archaic. But one needn’t lose heart, as the youth are largely forward-looking and a fair share of those aged above 70 years is not enamoured of the calls to safeguard obsolete traditions. It’s the middle-aged people, mostly from the upper castes, whose families are imbued with a casteist, patriarchal value system, that are up in arms,” he argues.
That the educated youth haven’t fallen prey to the divisive politics is being vouched by S. Ramachandran, a tribal student in his third year of law degree. “Their priorities are different. But there’s a general feeling that regardless of the outcome of this election, the climate of unrest will linger for some more time nationally.”
A word for the Left
N.M. Pearson, social critic who’s authored Poonoolum Konthayum on the Liberation struggle of the late 1950s led by the Church and the landed gentry against the Communist government, refuses to draw parallels between the two upheavals. “At work right now is fear of the other, which is cast over the upper and middle sections of Hindus, a section of Christians and the entire Muslim community. Institutions of faith are portrayed as under threat. The Left would do well to address the issue of secularism in more concrete terms,” he says.
Writer K. Rathi Menon admits to having reservations about the way the government handled the Sabarimala issue. “I’m temple-going and have nothing against women going to Sabarimala, but there needn’t have been such a hurry. But the issue doesn’t dictate my voting preference. Several young women told me how awkward they felt thinking of wearing the traditional set mundu on Vishu day, looking like the custom-guarding ‘kulasthrees’ of the namajapa protests. The protesters made a mockery of my faith.”
